Except that Germany and Japan have retained a larger share of workers in manufacturing, despite more automation. Germany has also retained much more of its manufacturing base than the US has. The evidence really does point to the role of outsourcing in the US compared with others.
http://www.economist.com/node/21552567
http://www.economist.com/node/2571689

A couple of nice pieces from Campbell and Bernstein (the CBPP link) in today's links. Campbell nicely drives a stake through the heart of the "robots are stealing your jobs" nonsense using international comparisons. Bernstein clearly delineates the structural inequities in our system and the ways that Republican policies, particularly the AHCA, make those much worse.

Chris Dillow: A right-wing case for taxing private schools: Sensible right-wingers should support Labour's plan to impose VAT on private schools. Let’s start from the fact that Labour wants to “bash the rich”, and you’ll not convince them otherwise. The question therefore is whether to do this...

"a "gentleman's farm" in IA worth $11mil would be roughly 1500 acres (somewhat smaller because part of it is equipment)."
Given that the average farm size in Iowa is less than 400 acres, this is highly unlikely to even exist in Iowa.

This is from Chloe Cho of the CBPP: The Myth That the Estate Tax Threatens Small Farms: Ahead of tomorrow’s House Agriculture Committee hearing on tax reform, a group of agricultural trade associations have called for repealing the estate tax on inherited wealth, arguing that “all too often at ...

This is from Chloe Cho of the CBPP: The Myth That the Estate Tax Threatens Small Farms: Ahead of tomorrow’s House Agriculture Committee hearing on tax reform, a group of agricultural trade associations have called for repealing the estate tax on inherited wealth, arguing that “all too often at ...

A nice piece by Dillow, who confirms my point that many, if not most, managers have little or no idea what they are doing. I would say that, for the US at least, he ignores the impact of stagnant wages over the past 40 years as a cause of declining productivity.

A wonderful piece and aligns with what I have long said, that we need to hold top executives personally responsible for the actions of their companies. Corporations do not act, people do and the CEO and other top executives are personally responsible for knowing what their business is doing.

Charles Goodhart: Why regulators should focus on bankers’ incentives: Last autumn, Charles Goodhart gave a special lecture at the Bank. In this guest post he argues that regulators should focus more on the incentives of individual decision makers. The incentive for those in any institution is ...

This is from Chloe Cho of the CBPP: The Myth That the Estate Tax Threatens Small Farms: Ahead of tomorrow’s House Agriculture Committee hearing on tax reform, a group of agricultural trade associations have called for repealing the estate tax on inherited wealth, arguing that “all too often at ...

Damn, that is even smaller than I thought. If anything we need to tax estates more aggressively. I really favor the idea put forward by some of the founders, who rightly feared the emergence of a hereditary aristocracy of wealth, of a confiscatory tax on really large estates.

This is from Chloe Cho of the CBPP: The Myth That the Estate Tax Threatens Small Farms: Ahead of tomorrow’s House Agriculture Committee hearing on tax reform, a group of agricultural trade associations have called for repealing the estate tax on inherited wealth, arguing that “all too often at ...

“Talk loudly and carry a small stick”: Trump Is Wimping Out on Trade, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: During the campaign, Donald Trump talked loudly and often about how he was going to renegotiate America’s “horrible trade deals,” bringing back millions of good jobs. So far, however, nothing has h...

“Talk loudly and carry a small stick”: Trump Is Wimping Out on Trade, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: During the campaign, Donald Trump talked loudly and often about how he was going to renegotiate America’s “horrible trade deals,” bringing back millions of good jobs. So far, however, nothing has h...

Which is what I said. Yes, the percentage of workers employed in those sectors declined as a result of increased automation, but the numbers of workers employed did not. It is only when offshoring takes off that there are actual reductions in the numbers of jobs.

The robots are coming,... - Larry Summers Is Academia Biased Against Stars? - Douglas L. Campbell The Real Corruption Is the Ownership of Congress by the Rich - ProMarket European parliamentary sovereignty -Thomas Piketty Republicans for Single-Payer Health Care - The New York Times What do...

What part of "It only reduced job growth" don't you understand. Yes, automation increased productivity in those industries. It did not reduce the *numbers* of jobs. Offshoring reduced the numbers of jobs.

The robots are coming,... - Larry Summers Is Academia Biased Against Stars? - Douglas L. Campbell The Real Corruption Is the Ownership of Congress by the Rich - ProMarket European parliamentary sovereignty -Thomas Piketty Republicans for Single-Payer Health Care - The New York Times What do...

The robots are coming,... - Larry Summers Is Academia Biased Against Stars? - Douglas L. Campbell The Real Corruption Is the Ownership of Congress by the Rich - ProMarket European parliamentary sovereignty -Thomas Piketty Republicans for Single-Payer Health Care - The New York Times What do...

The robots are coming,... - Larry Summers Is Academia Biased Against Stars? - Douglas L. Campbell The Real Corruption Is the Ownership of Congress by the Rich - ProMarket European parliamentary sovereignty -Thomas Piketty Republicans for Single-Payer Health Care - The New York Times What do...

China had a bigger impact on jobs after 2000 than robots did. I have never denied that automation played a role. Indeed, I have explicitly stated that businesses have automated those operations where this was easily done. However, they exported the far more numerous labor intensive processes to low wage/low regulation countries, going back to the 1970s.

The robots are coming,... - Larry Summers Is Academia Biased Against Stars? - Douglas L. Campbell The Real Corruption Is the Ownership of Congress by the Rich - ProMarket European parliamentary sovereignty -Thomas Piketty Republicans for Single-Payer Health Care - The New York Times What do...

But it did not actually reduce the numbers of jobs, which continued to rise. It only reduced job growth, and even that is not unambiguous, since it is not clear that we would have had the increase in productivity without automation.